Learning Theories

Jeffery Maynard Paul Lincke Kevin Kaiser Michael Hoven

Nardi (1995) believes that Activity Theory is the most comprehensive of the three social learning theories and we tend to agree with her. All three learning theories make valid contributions to our educational perspective, but Activity Theory seems to provide the richest framework, as it embodies some of the basic elements of both the Situated Cognition and Distributed Cognition theories. Situated Cognition, we believe, reinforces learning by making it more relevant to the learner, but Nardi's clever example of the bird watcher (1995, pg.44), the entomologist, and the meteorologist going for a walk shows how the "situation" of the individuals is the same (they are all on a walk) even though the “objects or goals” of the

three individuals may all be different. Even the actions are similar between the bird watcher and the meteorologist (they both look heavenward using binoculars), but their goals are different and need to be differentiated. In the end, the framework of both theories account for the importance of going for the walk to achieve learning. The framework of Activity theory goes beyond the situation to describe the motivation. Activity theory works well with examples because activity theorists have always tested their theories in practical ways and believe that application is an outcome of theory, not a separate activity (http://www.darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/ Nov 11, 2006) Distributed Cognition focuses on the process of learning and working within the interactions of a group. It assumes knowledge is shared among people in the accomplishment of the task, and that multiple individuals and their shared artifacts can "work together" to facilitate learning. Activity theory also makes claim for this interaction, as the activity is mediated through "artifacts" (the objects, language etc...). One of the major criticism of Distributed Cognition is there are few, if any, real measurable cognitions that a teacher or researcher can assess.

Our goals (objects) direct and motivate our activities. Taken out of context, our activities don't necessarily reveal our goals, but both our internal context (goals) and external context (artifacts, other people, setting) define our activities. To study learning in context, even though many theories can apply, we believe that activity theory is the best, as